


you're a real man, and you do what you can.

by judypoovey



Series: i'd be appalled if i saw you ever try to be a saint [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, all i wanted watching s3 was Murray ripping into those jokers that bullied nancy and so i wrote it, post-s3 fic, unlikely paternal figure murray bauman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 17:10:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judypoovey/pseuds/judypoovey
Summary: “They were awful!” she finally snapped out. “They were horrible to me. They called me names and turned me into a glorified waitress and treated me like I was an idiot!”Much like Nancy, there were instances in life where Murray found himself piloted by nothing but rage and righteousness. This was one of those instances.





	you're a real man, and you do what you can.

**Author's Note:**

> ALL i wanted in s3 was a murray + nancy moment and i didnt really get it BUT i got nancy wanting to be a journalist and being a ridiculously good investigator so that'll do, honestly. murray isn't going to abide any misogynistic dismissive bullshit for HIS not-daughter.
> 
> (also the information about murray having a kid he's kinda alienated from is from s2's beyond stranger things show, where brett gelman talks about a bit of backstory for murray. the long and short of it is that when he started getting obsessive over the barb case it destroyed his career and alienated him from his daughter and the rest of his family. idk if they're ever gonna incorporate that into actual canon, but i like it so i keep it in my personal murray canon.) 
> 
> and the title is from "patricia" by florence and the machine, because the interlude of the song is just a rage about toxic masculinity and it was my big mood during all of nancy's scenes.

Murray kept away from the hubbub for a few minutes. He let Joyce find her sons and comfort El, and he didn’t talk to the government suits flooding the scene. He didn’t want to talk to _anyone_ , he wanted to process. He wanted a drink. He wanted Jim to stumble out of the rubble alive and make it seem like they hadn’t just well and truly fucked everything up for everyone.

He was shaken from his thoughts by Nancy Wheeler running across the parking lot and launching herself at him. He barely had time to react to catch the hug so that they didn’t both hit the ground.

He couldn’t tell if this hug was for him or for her. Had she worried about him, or had she worried that no one else was worrying about him?

“You’re okay,” she said, sounding oddly relieved. When she pulled back, hasty and a little awkward, and noticed the holes in the uniform, she looked less confident. “ _Are_ you okay?” She looked around for the medics swarming the scene, as if she might flag one down.

“The uniform came pre-shot,” he said, quickly. Why was she caring about him when she’d been pummeled by some kind of interdimensional flesh monster? “Go back to the ambulance, you need to get –” He knew they hadn’t looked her over, yet, they’d probably just told them to stay put.

“I’m not hurt,” she said dismissively, though she very distinctly looked bruised and tired. Rubbing the dark spot on her neck, she shook her head. “It’s from the other day.”

Murray found himself wondering what in the hell had happened. Of course, they’d given them a rundown earlier, but it had been hurried and vague. Enough details for them to decide the kids needed to get the fuck out of Hawkins.

“You were supposed to be halfway to my place by now,” he said, trying not to sound like a scolding parent. He failed at that.

“We got derailed,” she said, looking at the wreckage of cars smoldering in the distance. “Where’s Hopper? I don’t –”

“He’s gone, Nancy.”

She wheeled around, her eyes searching for Eleven, who had collapsed against Nancy’s brother and Will Byers. Her pain was palpable. It made him shiver slightly. “… _El_ …” Nancy looked dangerously on the verge of tears, trembling with barely constrained rage.

That was Nancy. That’s why she was so hard to read, sometimes. She was all anger, barely restrained and seeping out of her at a moment’s notice. She’d been hard done-by and she was _pissed_. She was pissed that someone had taken her friend’s father from her, she was pissed that a monster that had already taken her best friend had come for her brother and his friends _again_ , and she had no outlet for it. So she just radiated that rage into the air, and no one noticed. Except Murray.

“Joyce will handle it,” he said, not feeling confident that any of this could be handled. “So, uh, you said you had been working at the newspaper. How was that?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the wheels in his brain that were turning at frightening speed. She had called him a few months back – he hadn’t answered or returned it, but he’d played the message a few times.

_(“I know you said not to contact you but… it’s Nancy. it’s nothing important. Me and Jonathan got jobs at the Hawkins Post. I was thinking maybe I could be a journalist. Thought maybe you’d have some advice. Bye.”_

Amid messages about late child support payments and guilt from his mother, it was one of the nicer messages anyone had left for him in a long while. _)_

Apparently, this was the wrong question to ask. The tears she was fighting back spilled over uncontrollably, and she wiped them away hurriedly, embarrassed by their sudden appearance. She took a shaky breath.

“What?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

He put his hands on her shoulders – they were both caked in enough dried blood that he wasn’t too worried about getting her dirty -- and tried to steady her. “Nancy, what the hell happened?”

“They were awful!” she finally snapped out. “They were horrible to me. They called me names and turned me into a glorified waitress and treated me like I was an _idiot_!”

Much like Nancy, there were instances in life where Murray found himself piloted by nothing but rage and righteousness. This was one of those instances. He couldn’t even fathom anyone treating Nancy Wheeler that way.

She was hugging him again.

Deep in his cold, grief-shriveled heart, he found a place of deep fondness for this kid. Even if he hadn’t returned her call (maybe he could pretend it was because he thought They were listening, but the truth was mostly that he was an asshole and he accepted that about himself), he had found a measure of pride in the fact that she had picked the same path he had.

 _She’s not_ your _kid, Bauman._

He hugged her back, thinking about what he could do to fix this. If it were his kid, he would fix it.

(Well, his kid wasn’t speaking to him, but what was new?)

She sobbed for a minute. Too much longer and it would be undignified, but it was enough to get it out of her system. When she pulled back, wiping her eyes, she startled at the sight of her parents at the edge of the yellow tape line.

Karen Wheeler did not wait for someone to wave her through, ducking under the tape and calling for her kids.

“Nancy! Nancy are you hurt? What happened to the car?” she babbled. “Where’s Michael?”

“We’re fine Mom,” she said. Rattling off an excuse that was half ‘I don’t know’ and half a well formulated lie. “Mike is fine, he’s with El…” she said, gesturing. Eleven was holding onto Joyce now, Mike at her back. “I don’t think Chief Hopper…”

Karen put a hand to her mouth.

Murray needed to exit this heart-rending family moment before someone realized he was still in a Soviet army uniform.

“And you are?” Karen asked of the middle-aged stranger she’d just found hugging her daughter.

“Oh, this is Murray Bauman, Mom, the reporter who found out what happened to Barb? He was…helping me with the story that I told you about. He’s a friend of the Chief’s. He was nearby and came to see if everything was all right…”

Karen Wheeler gave him a shrewd look, then a smile. “All right. Nice to meet you, Mr. Bauman.”

“Mrs. Wheeler.”

“I’m going to check on Mike and see if the paramedics will let us take you home,” she said, smoothing down Nancy’s hair and kissing her forehead.

Nancy stood there in the rain, damp and awkward. “I’m gonna go…”

“All right. I might be in town a few days, if you need anything.”

She walked away, back to Jonathan and Steve and the other kids as they were found to be healthy by the medics.

Murray slinked off into the shadows and flagged down Owens. “I assume you’re going to publish some sort of bullshit coverup,” he said.

“And you’ll publish some sort of bullshit expose a few months later,” Owens said agreeably.

“Could your men perhaps… _ban_ a publication from reporting about this…great tragedy at all? For a couple of days?” he asked innocently. “Like a local paper staffed by complete dipshits?” It was petty and spiteful, but hey, so was Murray.

“We’re the United States Government, Bauman, we can do anything.”

He snorted. “Well. Call it a favor.”

“I’d say _you_ owe _us_ after last year. That was a mess.”

“For you, yes.” He looked back at Nancy. “But people deserve better than your flaccid coverups and bullshit excuses, especially when people they love die because of these shitty experiments.”

“God, you’re a prick,” he said, sighing.

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

\--

Owens and his men kept Murray in Hawkins for four days. The Hawkins Post was on a blackout the entire time, unable to print even an Evening Edition about who had been spotted making out in the cemetery or whatever kind of stupid fluff pieces a small-town newspaper deemed important without the approval of the powers that be.

Their only significant release was a notice to their readership that they’d be taking a collective few days off to mourn their lost employees and the death of Chief Hopper, with some bare bones details about a tragic fire, and that they would have all of the details soon.

Maybe it made Murray a little extra angry that they were invoking Jim’s death to hide the fact that the government had their nuts in a vice, but the details of how they had abused Nancy were fueling him at this point.

He’d set up a meeting with the remaining “journalists” of the Hawkins Post, under the pretense of being a traveling journalist who wanted their expertise so he could write a story on the tragedy.

This was exactly the distraction he needed from the urge to drink himself into oblivion, wallowing over everything. Jim, Alexei, everything. Joyce threw herself into her children to fight the grief, and in his own weird way he was doing the same. Except he was motivated by spite.

He met Nancy in front of the office. He’d had to buy a whole outfit, because he’d been wandering around Joyce’s house in the Soviet uniform pants and a tank top for four days – both bloody and smelling like a rot that he had never smelled before. Neither of them had really been in the mood to care, but now was the time to care. He had to look halfway presentable for this fake meeting.

“You look different in a real shirt,” she said, half a smile on her face and she examined the jeans-and-collared-shirt combo he’d settled on, because non-plaid options were apparently limited in Indiana. “Less…”

“Crazy?” he offered, because he heard that a lot.

“Something like that.”

They walked inside together.

“I’m Murray Bauman,” he told a secretary that was very young and pretty and had probably, much like Nancy, had bigger aspirations than being planted at a typewriter all day. “I have a meeting at one o’clock.”

The secretary eyed Nancy with some confusion but smiled regardless. “They’re ready for you now, actually!”

“Oh, delightful,” he said, and they walked into the room. He could picture it perfectly when he saw the jokers who called themselves journalists in this town; a cavalcade of identical WASPs wearing five-dollar haircuts and ties gifted to them by dissatisfied housewives, with too many teeth and scotch on their breath barely after lunch time.

He had understood why Nancy had been shunted off to the side before, but now it was glaring at them in neon clarity.

_Most people, they aren’t wired like you and me._

“Mr. Bauman, it’s good to see you again. I assume you aren’t going to be talking about Russians or aliens this time,” one of the more repugnant looking ones said with a laugh, as Murray sat down. “But I’m interested in what brings you to Hawkins, since I don’t think there’s a government coverup here.”

He narrowed his eyes but forced a smile. “I was just in the neighborhood, visiting an old friend. I plan on writing a piece on the tragedy in Hawkins, and I was hoping to get a little bit of inside knowledge from your…stellar…publication to help me out.”

There were a few murmurs around the table. “Well, of course. We took a few days off publishing out of respect for the tragedy, but we’ve been compiling all of the information, nonetheless. We’d be happy to help. We lost a few good men to this, and we’d love to see their story done right for our citizens.”

“Great,” he said. “You can run it all by my partner,” he added, as Nancy was finally waved into the room.

“Nancy Drew!” someone said, with a tittering vitriol that set him on edge immediately. “I don’t think sick rats started the fire, Nancy Drew.”

“I’d ask for you to address her with respect or not at all, but I think that would render you all incapable of speech,” he said quickly, and an unnatural silence fell around the room. “If I’m being honest, as _enlightening_ as whatever information you have on the Starcourt fire is, I’m really here on a more personal vendetta. Journalist to ‘journalists’,” he said, leaning back in his seat and kicking his feet up on their table, a good impression of the sort of laid-back arrogance that men like this loved so much.

“I don’t know what this girl has told you,” one growled. “But we gave her plenty of opportunities to do –”

“ _I’m talking now._ You’re as impotent at your job as you are in your personal life, _Dan_ ,” he said, snapping his fingers at the man whose name probably wasn’t actually Dan. “Look, I know everything I’ll ever need to know about you just by speaking to you once. I’m not interested in whatever wounded male posturing you’re about to give me. You bullied a kid who wanted to do the right thing, probably barely even older than your own kids, and turned it around and punished her for it. You’re all pathetic.”

The one who seemed to be in charge stood up. “You can’t come in here under false pretenses just to shame us into giving a teenage girl her job back, Bauman –”

“I don’t want your shitty job back,” Nancy said. “I just wanted the satisfaction of seeing you put in your place by someone you’d actually listen to.”

“As if we’d listen to the guy who poked around Hawkins for weeks looking for imaginary psychic children and –”

“Exposed a massive government coverup that had resulted in the death of one of your citizens? Do you know who helped me with that, Phil?” He paused. “I just assumed your name was Phil. You look like one. I’ll spare your last brain cell the guessing game. Maybe if you’d known that Nancy was my protégé, you’d have treated her better, but I doubt it. I think your deeply engrained hatred of women would have prevented it no matter what.”

Another Blondish White Man scoffed. “We don’t _hate women_.”

“Whatever you tell yourself when you put your secretary face down into that hotel mattress, Hank.”

Hank turned bright red and looked like he was ready to jump over the table to get to Murray, who shared a satisfied smirk with Nancy.

“Hate, fear. Doesn’t make a difference. You fucked up big time by not recognizing my friend for what she is, and when we publish our next piece, it won’t be in Hawkins. You could offer me all the money in the world and I’d never let either of our names touch your toilet rag of a paper.”

They were silent, finally, now.

“Come on, kid,” he said, getting up and slinging an arm over Nancy’s shoulders and swaggering out of the room.

“Did you see their faces?” Nancy asked, laughing as they left the building. “I don’t know how to thank you for that. You didn’t need to do that.”

Murray waved her off. “I did need to do that. You’re -- well, work hard on the story and we’ll call it even.”

“What?”

“You thought I was kidding?” he asked, a little befuddled. Nancy had given him the means to see the truth, and even if the rest of the world couldn’t handle it, he was almost indebted to her for it. The least he could have offered her was an opportunity.

“I mean…” She chewed on her lower lip, looking thoughtful.

“You work for me now, Wheeler. It’s gonna suck, so you better get ready. I mean, emotionally ready.”

“It can’t be any worse than anything else I’ve lived through this week,” she said.

“I consider that a challenge.”


End file.
